Capnography, a noninvasive monitoring modality that records the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in exhaled breath as a function of time or volume, produces a capnogram that is, a graph that reflects characteristics of the lung and is useful for diagnosis of cardiorespiratory conditions. Others in our group have recently developed a simpler mechanistic capnogram model than those described in the literature. Promising results have been obtained for identifying patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using the model parameters that are fit to the time-based capnogram. The goal of this project is to refine the mechanistic model to capture specific characteristics of the capnogram in congestive heart failure and asthma for eventual use in developing simple and effective diagnostic procedures.

I am participating in SuperUROP because I am planning to do a PhD and think that working one-on-one with a professor will be a great preparation. In my sophomore and junior years, I did active research in the Graybiel Lab and enjoyed it greatly. I am very excited that this project involves the biomedical applications of EECS and want to learn more about these applications, since I am considering further studies in this field.